


Fallen Heroes

by SugarStarCuties



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarStarCuties/pseuds/SugarStarCuties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Die to become a hero or live as a pariah?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They say we’re long since dead  
Tell me why I hear his voice  
Inside my head

When you’re already dead there’s no reason to sleep. Food loses its savor and our senses degenerate to seek nothing but pleasure. In the first months nobody spoke to one another. They holed themselves up in hive copies, stole away to pretend their lives had never been interrupted. I wandered their memories, half eager to escape from them, wondering if the dream bubbles would continue or if we were doomed to meet again. 

Once the ingenuity of living as dead wore off ‘life’, as we loosely put it, was something else entirely. Trapped in bodies not meant for the minds of prepubescent trolls, pleasure was the only comfort from morbid epiphany. Shame and Inhibitions aren’t worth much when you’ve got infinity to make mistakes. 

“Tuna, you seen Kurloz?” I fear that I’ve come to hate her, not ashen or black, a simple hatred based on “Mobius double reach around” style vengeance. How could this have happened? Meenah’s only crime in life was our murder, but she hadn’t expected to ‘live’ to see the consequences or anger of her friends. I hadn’t imagined she’d grow to become a mass murderer, my captor in another life, a jealous Queen. 

“No. Not lately. Isn’t he with Meulin. Go check there dumbass. Or is it dumb bass?” God I hate my lisp.

“Tuna that wasn’t even a sentence. What the shell are you trying to say?” 

Damn it. Her glossy white eyes followed my hands as they rose into the air, not by choice, a consequence or punishment if you will. Punishment for saving the people I thought cared for me. It turns out there are a lot of things I didn’t know. Including how heartless one can be, even when raised to coddle unconditionally.

“I’m sorry.” Apologize. It’s all your fault. All of it. At least that’s what the voice says to do, and I know what happens when I say no.

“It’s fine.” She sighed, fish lips puffed out. “Which way did he go. Just point dude.” 

Nobody understands. I don’t expect them to anymore. Words come out perfectly in theory but end up garbled. I can’t tell when the spasms happen, the only warning is a shocked expression on their face, wondering what’s going on. The words fly out. Not that I’ve never cussed or spoken about Meenah’s choice tits before. But I don’t mean it anymore. Not like this. 

“MT! Hey check out what I learned!” Latula yells down from Porrim’s castle home. I give her a thumbs up. She dives down, a four wheeled device the only protection from a second death. When it smacks against the ground it bounces back up completely, four flips before resting on the sand. I give her a kiss on the cheek, light just in case something happens, trying not to ram fangs into delicate gray. She chuckles and returns the kiss.

Staring into the mirror, if you could even call it that, realistically a shard of glass glued with honey to my hive wall. I see nothing familiar. Scars of blue and red veins run up and down each cheek connecting along my neck. There are mustard marks along my eyes that I don’t recognize, Kurloz says they’re scars from the accident. I wouldn’t call it that, I didn’t make a mistake in saving them. But they’d rather believe that I was a mistaken loser than a hero. I would too. I can’t imagine a hero with this many problems. 

When the bubbles collided with their universe the aliens began to watch us. They watch as I had, judging from their pedestals atop Derse’s highest towers. The yellow haired alien gives a smirk when she catches the glare of my helmet turning her way. She knows something. 

“I never had the pleasure of meeting your ancestor. But I’m assuming the similarities are slim.” 

I assumed it was a crack on my ‘special problems’. Not worth mentioning if she wouldn’t understand anyways.

“Not as slim as you.” That one wasn’t a spasm or slip. I honestly didn’t care what she thought; I had no use for alien sympathy or friendship.

“It’s easier being perverse than admitting pain isn’t it?” 

Neither did she.


	2. Chapter 2

The voices never die  
Alone in silence do they thrive  
Waiting for the blood to dry

From atop the Derse castle towers there’s an everlasting quiet. Without the horror terrors lurking in the void there’s a sense of loss, something is missing. It’s the curses and voices, screeching in underwater tones as if they’re drowning, urging you on. I would say that I almost miss them. But I’ve got different voices in my head now. 

They sound familiar, raspy and calm. It began the night of my “accident”. A deep voice crawled into my head, whispered what must be done. Pulled at my limbs and gnawed at every nerve until I couldn’t help but obey. The whole world had gone into hues of purple. There was nothing but bright violet light. 

When I could feel again the voices were softer, praising my deeds. Screams echoed in the background, just barely overshadowing the whispers. Latula called my name. Her hands were on my face, where had my helmet gone? Stronger arms began to lift me up, ran, when had the world become so bright? Purple hues were replaced with blinding sunlight akin to Beforus’ star. 

They called it a travesty. A mistake. As if my choice to save them was nothing they had wanted. I suppose it didn’t really matter, Meenah ended up killing us anyways. But it didn’t stop the voices. 

When I refuse to listen to their demands the voices grow. They multiply, a raspy tone transforms into a bellowing roar. No longer do the spasms come as they often do, rather each nerve in my nonexistent flesh begins to flare as if on fire. Before I can comprehend what’s occurred there are gaps in memory. Entire sections of my brain have been blocked off, private to all including myself. The thing is, they aren’t missing because of the ‘accident’, the voices keep me from seeing exactly what crimes I’ve done.   
One day these blocked memories didn’t work as they should have. On the day we died there was a ten hour space where the voices had disappeared. It was as if they were preoccupied with a different matter which I could not know of. In that day I saw the deaths of five people whom I loved. My body had moved on its own accord, as if I was no longer its master.

Latula’s dream self was lying before me, bleeding a beautiful teal upon her shirt. The crescent moon was no longer white. Holes had erupted in her chest, gaping wounds with electric burns still glowing on the skin surrounding them. Her organs were scattered about the floor as if a barkbeast had ripped them out to chew on their slippery gray exterior. Teal covered my own face, scratches lined both hands, she’d clawed furiously. I’d grabbed her from behind and the violet light behind my eyes gave forth a burst of energy strong enough to pull what powers I had left from hiding. Blue and red bolts of light shot from the windows, illuminating the prospit sky, blood coated each wall. The voices were pleased.

Aranea was sitting underneath one of her beloved trees, those which grew in the forests of Beforus. Her attention was turned to something other than the world around her, a journal detailing the life of her ancestor. She didn’t hear me come up behind her. The powers I’d coveted and used for years were not meant for a murder such as this. Instead, I bashed her head in with a club whose strife card had mysteriously appeared in my specibus when the voices took over. The poor girl didn’t turn to see who had killed her. Brain matter propelled from the break in her skull, when she hit the ground skaian blue began to cascade down her cheeks. Under their spell the voices had me push her now dead body over onto its back. One eye was hung out of its socket, a nerve ending beginning to fray from the damage. I tore the cancer sign from her neck and the voices guided me back to Derse. 

Latula, Aranea, Rufioh, Meulin, Damara, I’d killed each of them. It wasn’t the soul I knew as mine behind my visor, a malevolent force brought the club down on their bodies. Hacked away until their hearts were left beating in the open air, drew a smile on each face with the blood which poured from their veins, and twisted my lips into a grin darker than any shadow I’d known. 

In that day I knew that I could not ignore the voices which raged inside. Ignoring them meant allowing it to take control of what was left to my name. For years I ran, hiding amongst the bubbles, avoiding those who had loved me. Each day the voices would whisper new tidings, demands which I could not satisfy. When they began to scream I would run until I found the other players, never letting them see me I hid nearby. Whatever commanded the voices knew if I was seen by any player committing their crimes I would become useless to them. 

Latula was the first to find me amongst the thousands of memories we’d amassed. Sitting on what used to be my Derse tower I’d given up on running from her, or any of them. It was centuries past our own deaths, time doesn’t matter much. 

“Mituna.” Her voice was choking before it could reach her lips. Brain damage and all I could recall every tick in her body that surrendered what she tried to hide. 

“Sorry.” I said.

“For what?”

“Not finding you.”

“It’s okay.” She didn’t ask a single question about where I’d been or why I hadn’t found her. Latula knew as well as I that had I wanted to seek her out she wouldn’t be lost for long. I suppose dying puts things into a new perspective.

Within months Latula had led me back to the other players. Surrounded by old friends who had learned to recognize when I was near, the voices could do little to command me. They would continue to whisper inside, but no longer dared to take control lest I be caught. 

It was silent for a while, the busy streets of Derse and Beforus kept the voices from roaring in my ears. That is, until the very reality we existed in broke into a million shards as if thrown onto the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2! Although I'm updating the day after the first chapter please don't demand I be this fast for every chapter. It will most likely be two or three days before I have the next. Thank you~


	3. Chapter 3

Confess to me  
Your sins untold  
And hope I cannot see

“What’s going on?” Kurloz hadn’t glanced up at the cracks since the explosion happened. It was as if he wasn’t interested. 

He shrugged, no answer obviously. 

A luminous green light had appeared in the sky above only to erupt into an enormous flurry of flashing colors. Black globs of our world broke free and were compressed into dust. Slowly the powder had begun to float down towards the bubbles exterior where it settled. We had no memories of dust like this so it remained outside, a cloud of death over our soulless world. 

Gradually gray swirls were starting to rise from the destruction, flying about the dark space as if searching for what they'd lost. Ghosts of souls. No longer a troll nor human, merely an existence without heart or mind. 

Kurloz reached out to grab my hand, the woven smile upon his face beginning to fade. He shook his head, no more gazing at the rift. “Is it going to come for us?” I asked.   
He took the helmet from my head and set it on his lap, it had been a while since I’d seen his expression grow so bleak. No, he shook his head letting a few waves of hair bounce against his cheeks. 

“It’s going to be okay?” 

Kurloz shrugged. 

The Beforus suns melted into the distance as the Alien star emerged in its place. It seemed strange how our worlds could be the same, simply a color scheme apart. Commotion rose from the main bubble where Aranea and the yellow-orange alien had taken to gathering. From our hilltop I could watch the crowd grow larger as more ghosts and spirits found their way to Aranea’s voice. She’d been calling for hours, demanding that we come together to decipher what our options were. 

Actually it didn’t seem to be working, all I saw were two trolls in the middle of a skurmish. One of them looked like Meenah. I wasn’t surprised. 

“She’s not going to learn is she?” I asked. Kurloz’s body shook as if he had laughed and he shook his head again.

“It’s not like they’re going to listen to her.” Aranea, arguably the true leader behind Meenah’s impulsive reign. She was intelligent, I’d never doubted that, however she lacked the persuasion and aggressiveness of her moirail. Together they would’ve formed a team able to destroy any foe in their path; thankfully they’d been born with a sense of mischief rather than blood lust. 

“It’s just a bit amusing isn’t it?” Kurloz gave out a deep throated bellow, one of the few noises which still passed through his lips. I turned to see the yellow haired alien standing a few feet away. 

“More like pathetic.” I said. She gave a shrug and a light smile. 

“In its own rights yes, just a little.” Kurloz had stopped growling but his pale eyes remained a scowl. 

“Shouldn’t you be down there?” She gave a small shrug. 

“At this point I don’t think I’m all that necessary. There’s something much larger coming on our horizon.” 

“Larger than that?” She followed my gaze towards the rift, still glowing a series of brilliant colors.

“Yes. Did you think you’d be so blessed as to find peace in death?” A smirk appeared across her face. “We can’t all be lucky.” 

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t hope.” I said. 

“I guess not.” She said. “I never got your name did I?”

“Mituna.”

“Rose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three! Thanks for kudos guys! I'm taking writing commissions on Tumblr (same username).


	4. Chapter 4

Listen to our curse  
We’ve died but cannot breathe  
Sitting atop the throne of Derse

Kurloz stood in the doorway, uneasy as if he’d felt a presence I couldn’t sense. His eyes were set towards the ceiling, glassy orbs trained on the air vents. I knew better than to worry too much about him. Even mute, Kurloz was far from useless, the very reason I’d taken to him, one of the only people who’d believed in me after the ‘accident’. I stepped away from the hallway into the open gray room. 

“This looks familiar.” I murmured. Rose had taken a seat on a pile of embroidered pillows in the center. The entire room was filled with vials of potion and pieces of fabric strewn across the floor. 

“It may have existed in your game as well.” Rose said. It’d only been minutes since she’d guided us to their traveling home but she was already immersed in a makeshift folder barely held together with woven yarn. 

“Where are you going?” We’d heard that the Aliens were traveling, on a journey to a game that didn’t belong to them. It was rumored they were trying to defeat what we’d failed to solve. 

“Another session. Our ancestors. Or descendants, I’m not entirely sure.” She chuckled a bit at the thought. 

“Dancestors?”

“Haha, I suppose that works.” Kurloz placed a hand on my shoulder. With the other he pointed towards a bookshelf, on the lowest shelf there was an orb sitting between several books. It was a porcelain white but something was moving from inside. A tinge of green and yellow swam underneath the pale exterior. Take it. I couldn’t resist the voices this time, they were beckoning, pushing me forward. The orb was in my hand. It was shining as if set alight by another force. It was solid like a sea-beast pearl yet airy, as if when I let go it would merely float. 

“I wouldn’t suggest holding that for too long.” Rose said. I turned around to find that Kurloz had disappeared from the room. 

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s a bit complicated, to be frank it’s simply a suspicious artifact, it’s easy to get lost.” Her tone grew somber, as if there were memories lingering where she didn’t want them. I recognized it.

“Personal experience?”

“I’d rather not talk about it if you wouldn’t mind.” 

It seemed unlikely that she would lie about something with such personal meaning, I put the orb back on its shelf in between the books. However there was something different lodged in my mind, what had been pestering at me since she’d appeared on the hill.

“Would you rather talk about something else?” She asked. I had to admit, the girl was quick on her draw. A superior seer; or at least considerably better than our own whining brat. 

“How can you understand me?”

“What do you mean by that?” She smirked, I lifted up the visor and glared at her. Rose chuckled, at least she’d caught my meaning without pupils. Blank eye sockets aren’t helpful for facial expression. “I’ll give you that one. Actually I’m not particularly sure why I can decipher your speech. I can hear the lisp, stutters, and mistakes but I suppose you could say I can ‘see’ right through it.”   
“Lame.” I remarked, she laughed a bit louder than before. As if we hadn’t used all the class and aspect jokes known to any living species through our millennia of solitude. 

“I’ll take credit for that one. But I am quite serious. How many of your players can understand?”

“None. Not that I know of. Latula is still confused and Kurloz can’t say any different, there’s no telling if he hears a single word.” 

“I wouldn’t underestimate your friend.” Rose seemed a bit unsettled at the mention of Kurloz. “That mistake has been made before.” 

“What?”

“His Ancestor/Descendant. He was, from what I heard, a silly clown with little threat to the other players. Until of course he murdered several of them.”

“Who?” I had yet to hear that story. In fact I’d spoken to the trolls from our spawned session, there weren’t many of them still alive. I’d assumed they’d died in the same fashion as we had, a lost session spurned quite a few corpses. Not a soul had mentioned a traitor among their players. 

“The descendants of Meulin and Horuss. However he decapitated quite a few of the players who had already been killed. Around the time we began to contact your ‘dancestors’ they had a case of mutiny, quite a few of their friends died. He took their bodies before we could hold a funeral of any culture.”

“Not to offend your moirail or yourself, but I’m wary of juggalos from any generation these days.”

“It’s okay.” Ironic it seemed that Kurloz and Meulin had taken on roles opposite of their own kin. Kurloz wasn’t the same though, he wouldn’t kill anyone let alone the people who he cared for. That thought didn’t keep me from wandering back towards Rose’s story. 

“I wouldn’t give it much weight though, from what I’ve seen ancestry doesn’t mean much towards one’s personality.” I nodded but Rose could see the story wasn’t going to leave me quickly. 

Rather than allow me to dwell on what she’d said Rose beckoned for me to come closer. Inside her folder there was a timeline stretched across several dozen pages. She took a larger piece of paper from the back pocket and placed it on the ground. A map of our worlds, or to be exact what she’d gathered from the players she’d found. On one side was the drawing of our world before the game began, Beforus/Alternia was small in the universal orbit. A gray dot among the Earth’s various stars. The other side displayed a familiar sight, one I’d seen for millennia in placement of our past home. Skaia sat in the middle, an orb filled with circling clouds. Derse and Prospit rotated around it from below, in unison so that they never grew too close to one another From the edges dark tentacles of the terrors lurched towards Derse. Each detail was similar to the games, among the few similarities all four shared. However the battlefield was left opaque, five different sets drawn on top of one another. 

“What happened to them?” 

“The battlefield is our final frontier of this world, at least that’s what it was designed to be. There is far more beyond it but most we weren’t meant to explore. As you can guess we’ve all broken that rule quite often seeing as we’re plummeting away from our own as we speak. Only when the sprites are prototyped does the battlefield change from the square design. Without this design the Derse agents would be free to take Prospit as they have in every past session. Because my own ancestors failed to prototype anything pre-entry they have no such changes, in an average session with this change they would be unable to win or lose. They would be stuck in the game for eternity much as your own session was until your leaders, well, rash solution.” I had a feeling she’d spent a great deal of time thinking about this. Far more than any of our players had. “What made this different is that there is a Black Queen unlike any created by the game. Instead your friend’s alternate reincarnation is their Queen. An unruly one at that. She’s been causing trouble for the alpha session ever since she was commanded to take control. In fact I’ve begun to suspect she just enjoys causing other people misery and the plots she’s undertaken to ruin the alpha game weren’t in her commands at all. Although she’s controlled by the game’s villain she’s one of the many wild cards roaming the alpha session.”

“Wasn’t the green monster the only villain? There’s only supposed to be one final boss.”

“There was. The Black King. However the ‘Condensce’, as she’s called, killed him a while ago. She isn’t fond of competition. The monster who destroyed our alternate selves is another player, one who’s forced his entire being off a deep end he can’t hope to climb out of.”

“Anything else you’ve failed to tell us?” She gave me a sideways glance, obviously noting that my tone had become just a bit unruly. To be completely honest I was a bit conflicted that we hadn’t known the odds were stacked so highly against us. Aranea had no idea what kind of monster she was seeking out, nor the monstrosity she was trying to defeat. Usually that wouldn’t have been a problem, except we knew that death wasn’t the end to our struggle for survival. 

“There are two other agents to the monster. One is the agent who destroyed your ancestors chance of completing their game, ironically they were his creators as well. Bec Noir is a mutated form of both a session’s God and a Dersite carapace. Which wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have an obsession with stabbing people to death.” Her grip on the map tightened, a furrowed look came upon her face. It didn’t take a great deal of capability to see that something had happened between this agent and her own life.

Despite this brief display Rose was covering up her grimace within seconds, putting the same dignified expression back onto her face. “As I was saying, the second and last agent of the beast is unfortunately one of your own kind.”

“What?” 

“During the mutiny of your descendants players two of the trolls thought they would survive if they could join Bec Noir, seeing as they believed he was their only remaining opponent. One of those trolls was killed, by my own ‘matesprit’ as I think they’re called. The other was turned to the side of the monster by a nearly omniscient being, Doc Scratch. He, of course, is Gamzee.” She rolled the papers back up and placed them carefully into the folder pocket. “I sadly don’t have much evidence as to his betrayal. In fact Kanaya herself doubts it could be true. I on the other hand believe that juggalo has something he hasn’t been truthful about.”

“What makes you think that? It would take a lot to make a troll turn on their own moirail.” 

“That will have to wait until another time. Our space is about to leave the nearest dream bubble, we’ll encounter another bloom in about a day. Naturally you can’t stay here while we’re in the realm of the living.” 

“I know.” 

“You should probably go find your friend.” I nodded. “Remember though, you can’t hope the monster won’t find you on his own. Don’t speak of what I told you, I believe it would disrupt Aranea’s plans and as naïve as they may be she’s a vital part of our escape. Come find me when our meteor passes through.” 

I gave Rose another shake of the hand, she smiled and sent me on my way. When I left the meteor Kurloz was already back in the bubble we’d left. He waved, had I paid closer attention I may have seen him place an item on his lap into his captchalog. An orb which shimmered with green and purple light amongst a porcelain pale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of dialogue, especially from Rose, don't skip it it's important to later events~ Thanks for the comments guys I love it! I'm still accepting writing commissions too.


	5. Chapter 5

We hide in dreams  
Live in senses  
Taking what glitters and gleams

That ‘night’, if you could truly call it that, was oddly silent. The tension between alpha and beta had simmered to a calming roll, the trolls which had gathered hours before in the valley were now back into their own dream bubbles. Set to relive their past until eventually there was nothing left worth experiencing. Kurloz had greeted me on the hill overlooking the lands of the beta players only to sign that he had something to do before he could talk with me again. 

Rather than sit among the grass waiting for him I decided it was better to wander off in search for someone else. Contrary to the usual I wasn’t feeling as if being by myself was such a wise choice. Even though forming large groups was exactly what Rose had cautioned me against. In the Land of Little Cubes and Tea a few imps wandered around. Their faces seemed set in a permanent grimace, I hadn’t remembered our imps looking so forlorn. 

“Tuna!” The high pitched screech was familiar, but definitely not who I’d been expecting. Meenah grabbed me by the arm and threw me over her shoulder. 

“Where are we going?” I yelled. 

“No questions!” The more time I spent around Meenah the more I came to believe she was selective about which parts of my speech she understood. Especially since my criticisms never were heard yet the second I pretended to feign interest in her blathering both fins were perked and she knew every word. “Look another little friend for you to play with.” Meenah threw me down onto a small pile of crushed sugar cubes. “So I’ll be going now-”

“Noo! You should stay!” I was too busy being sore to notice who was talking. Meenah however seemed rather upset that her kidnapping had gone in vain. 

“Okay.” She sighed and took a seat on a pile of sugar powder beside me. “Sit up Tuna.”

“Wha-” She grabbed my shoulder and lifted me up until I was sitting before a large sugar cube. On the other end was a troll I wasn’t sure I’d seen before. She looked a bit like Meulin though.

“Welcome! Who are you new furriend?” The hair was considerably shorter and this look-a-like was surely younger than our own Leijon. It wasn’t until I opened my mouth to speak that I noticed several bright green wounds which punctured her gut. Her Derse dress was torn revealing green blood which still continued to drip out from her torso. However you appear in the bubbles is how you remember yourself the clearest. Despite the smile on her face it was obvious her death was the moment that had bound itself to her memory. 

Meenah jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. “Answer her!” She hissed.

“Oh. I’m Mituna.” A spasm came on. Meenah rolled her eyes and put her arms on the table.

“Elbows off the table this is a purrfect tea party!” The girl grinned, tea cup in hand. Although she grumbled Meenah obliged. She may have pretended to be a rough and tumble troll but Meenah was as much of a toy for this girl as I was. “Hello Mituna! It’s mice to meet you! I’m Nepeta.” 

“Hi Nepeta.” 

“Would you like some tea?”

“Sure.” Nepeta reached down underneath the table and poured a cup. I kind of wished my own land had been so pleasing but there are few perks, if any, to being a hero of doom. Then again it only made sense, lands aren’t chosen by the hero, rather they’re formed by the hero’s own subconscious thoughts. Yet that didn’t explain why Nepeta’s land was completely devoid of light, instead rolling hills of sugar blocked out all sound. It was dark, as if a permanent eclipse had taken place. Rain clouds slowly formed overhead, looming above as if to torment the inhabitants knowing there was nowhere to go where the darkness and cold wouldn’t follow. 

“Thanks.” I took the cup and found that the tea inside was steeped a bright red. A heart had been crudely scratched into the bottom of the cup. I glanced at Meenah’s, the same etched heart peered back up at me. Latula used to do that too, drew hearts all over her skateboards and damaged game controllers. It was when we weren’t dating, she would hide them and pretend she had no clue where they’d come from. When we’d been matesprits for a while I asked her and she said ‘sometimes you just care about someone so much you cant keep it in’. 

“Meenah? Any more tea?”

“No thanks pussycat.” Meenah hadn’t noticed. Then again she didn’t really have the compassion to think any further about a simple heart, realistically she was probably biding time until she could get away. 

“Nepeta?” I asked.

“Yes?” She smiled up at me, only since I’d noticed the heart did I see a twinge in her grin. It wasn’t as real as she wished it could be. 

“What’s wrong?” A flicker came across her eyes, something which hinted at why her land was so desolate. 

“Nothing. I’m purrfectly okay!” 

“You’re lying.” Meenah kicked me from under the table. Nepeta’s toothy smile faded away. 

“Shut up.” Nepeta began to sniff, holding back a frown which had started to find its way onto her face. Meenah sat back in the sugar pile, she’d never been good with emotional people. 

“Nepeta, who was it?” My lisp obscured the last two words but the snarl developing in her throat and the tears slowly forming in her eyes meant she understood. 

“Shut up!” Without the feral hiss of a warning, which I assumed was meow beast behavior universally and obviously wasn’t, Nepeta leaped over the table and landed on my chest. For all the petite childlike innocence in her voice she was 100% a killer, I’d felt a fury like hers before. The force of her leap threw us back and into the nearest sugar hill. My head cracked against the solid heap and I heard the sound of my helmet itself snapping in half. After a moment of assuring myself that second death clearly wasn’t in the cards for me I opened my eyes to see Nepeta sitting on my chest. Her eyes were filling with tears, streams of green running down her cheeks, both paws clutched to her stomach where the wounds had begun to bleed with a ferver. 

“I loved him.” She whispered, sobs breaking her words in two. Meenah’s footsteps slowed, she’d run to us, with one of the only sympathetic looks I’d ever seen on her face.   
“He didn’t love you back.” I said. Nepeta shook her head furiously. The gaping holes in her stomach festered, although the wounds were fresh as if she’d just died the skin around it was rotted and blackened with death. 

“He loved someone else.” Nepeta hiccupped and wheezed, trying to catch her breath. “I found him again. After all this time. But even then he still loved her. Not one timeline, never, he never loved me!” She pounded her paws onto my ribcage and threw her head down to rest on my shoulder. I tried to hug her but the sobs kept her body shaking as if she were dying again. “I had a moirail. I had another life. He left to be part of someone else’s game, even the other half of me is gone. It’s only me now.” She whimpered into my shirt. “I just want someone to stay.” 

“I’ll stay!” Meenah blurted. I'd never seen her that close to blubbering before.

“Really?” 

“Yeah. We’ll both stay. And when we have to go we’ll get someone else to play with you. You don’t have to be alone.” 

When water meets sugar the sugar begins to dissolve until there is nothing more but a cloudy puddle left. A little pond sits where Nepeta, Meenah, and I had sat, long after she’d finally gotten off my chest. Meenah played along nicely after all, sat and had tea with Nepeta while I went to find other ghosts who might be as lonely as her. By the time Meenah left to find other soldiers in her barely existing army there was a group of ghosts huddled around Nepeta’s sugar table. I caught Meenah on the way out. "When did you develop feelings?" 

"How about you learn to speak right."

"You understood me." I smirked.

"Shut up. Maybe she's not the only one who knows what it's like to be abandoned." I'd nearly forgotten about that. I let Meenah walk away towards the nearest dream bubble. 

I watched from a sugar hill, passing time until the meteor shot overhead, and she was happy. A few carapaces toyed around with their cups, mostly amused with such intricate things and odd colored juices. The ghost of a Piexes descendant giggled and joked with Nepeta. 

In what felt like an instance the clouds hovering above her land had cleared. Sunlight fell onto the party, and the teacups began to glisten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this chapter, I spent the holidays with friends as I hope you all did!


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Once upon a time  
There is no fairy tale  
Just a hanging for a crime

It was several hours, nearly ten, since Rose and I had parted ways. A steady influx of ghosts poured in and out of Nepeta’s tea party. I’d never seen a troll so eager to be greeted by strangers let along those with more gruesome stories than her own. I would have loved to swap stories of heroic tragedy, not really, but I had somewhere else I intended to be.   
I walked back to the grassy knoll where Kurloz and I had been sitting nearly a day before. A new scenery was set beside it where the valley had been. The lands of the trolls had been replaced with a human town. A sign that the meteor was drawing closer. Rather than go searching for him I sat down in the grass and looked down on the bubble merged with ours. 

The heat radiated from the city below, a red and orange sun rising above. Skycrapers reached as if wishing they could rip the sun from its sky to take it down for their own. One tower stood above the rest. A murder of crows erupted from the power line atop the building, they flew into the air and disappeared. 

I hadn’t come back for the scenery though. I pulled out a ‘shell’ phone from my captchalog. Meenah had insisted on them during the game, turns out some things stay in your pockets long after death. I still had no idea why everyone had to have theirs shaped like a shell. I opened up the chat client automatically. I’d blocked myself from everyone but her. The same familiar line of text. “Latula?” A spasm ran through my arm shoving the phone into my helmet. “Ow.” 

“You ok4y b4b3?” She typed. 

“Ye2.” 

“Wh3r3 4r3 you?”

“Do you remember the fiield where ii took you?” 

“Not cl34rly but 1f you do 1t should b3 th3r3!”

“ii’ll be here.” 

A dumb grin had appeared across my face. Sometimes love doesn’t have to end with death. Latula had told me that the humans had a ritual where they became matesprits, with a vow ‘to death do us part’. Honestly if death could part love from two beings then it didn’t seem likely they ever cared in the first place. Love doesn’t die; immortality only exists for those who don’t seek it. 

She tapped on the top of my helmet. “What happened?” I turned up to see Latula standing behind me with our boards in hand. 

“This?” I took off the helmet carefully, curved horns aren’t the best for any sort of hat. “Just a playful jump. It’s nothing.” 

“I’d say it makes you look rad but I don’t want you getting hurt again.” Latula took the helmet from my hands and put it into her own log. “I’ll surf by Horuss tonight babe.” 

“Stay for now?”

“Gray for row?” 

“Stay For Now!” I blurted. Latula laughed, the sweetest sound I knew in the afterlife. No bribe of angels nor food laced with sugar could make me give up a world where I could still hear and see her as if her heart were beating. 

“Alright.” She sat beside me, nestled into the grass and leaned against me with her head on my shoulder. The breeze brushed though the grass and blew her hair against her cheek. In all my life I’d hated enough to become doom itself yet this was one of the few things in life, I could never let myself believe could end. Within an hour Latula was ‘asleep’ against me, her hands curled up beside my torso, when I swept the hair out of her face a dark lipped smile stared back at me. 

As I was lying there, eyes set on Latula’s sheepish grin a shadow appeared above us. Kurloz hovered above me, his sewn lips in a tight frown. The orb I’d seen him toying with earlier was no longer in his hand, I finally began to wonder why exactly he’d taken it from Rose’s bookshelf. Had she even noticed it was gone? Most likely not, it probably wasn’t that important if at all. “Hey.” The instant I realized Kurloz was there I could feel the nerves in my body start to relax, for some reason the spasms and voices would stop whenever he was near. I figured it was because he was calming to me, even to the parts of me which I no longer controlled.   
He signed something quickly, for a moment I couldn’t spot his fingers as they dashed along. “Are you meeting Rose?” He asked. I nodded. A smirk appeared on his face but was covered in seconds, there was something he wasn’t going to admit to. 

“Why? Do you want to come?” 

“No.” 

“Alright.” I didn’t prod any further. 

Kurloz sat on my other side, making sure not to let his boots clobber to the ground lest Latula wake up only to chew him out for being a ‘noisy lil runt’. She had a tendency to act her meanest and toughest around those she didn’t understand, the number one of our session being Kurloz. While I spent hours by his side, talking, sometimes just to remember that a piece of me hadn’t changed; she thought there was something off about the juggalo. When he came around she made a point to disappear, saying only that there wasn’t a single drop of life behind his eyes even when we’d been alive. 

“Ask her what her plans are.” Kurloz signed. It took a second for my brain to register, he hadn’t been there when I’d spoken with Rose. How did he know that she too had plans for the cherubin monster hovering over our heads? She had never stated so explicitly but it didn’t take a third of my damaged scarred intellect to know that Rose was never going to bow down before a beast. She would rather die with needles jammed into her heart, watching her efforts go up in flames, than bow before such a creature let alone any of his emissaries. 

“Why?”

“She is important.” 

“To who?”

“To all of us.”

In a moment the voices spurred forth with a screaming vengeance. Images of blood and horror poured into my eyes, not the deaths I had caused but of something I hadn’t seen before. It came out of my mouth before I could stop it, just as Kurloz jerked to a start and the voices stopped. 

“She’s going to die isn’t she?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so incredibly sorry this chapter was delayed as far as it was. I had a great deal of personal things to deal with I will be getting back on track. Thanks for your patience everyone!

**Author's Note:**

> Fallen Heroes will be updating regularly, all new updates will be posted on Tumblr the day they're uploaded to AO3.


End file.
